10/31/2017

Today is an important and joyous day. It is the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, of the day Martin Luther nailed his theses to the wall. Irrespective of whether you are a Protestant or an atheist, today is an important day in the history of civilisation, as Martin Luther was the first to assert in the post-classical era that an individual could look at the Bible, that an individual could think for his or her self, without the intermediary of satraps imposed without one's say by a foreign prince. Martin Luther's bold assertions led to the Williamite Settlement Act of 1689--ratified in blood the following July at the Boyne--which, in turn, inspired the First and Second Amendments of the United States Constitution.

If this anniversary were not joyous enough, I am still in the glow of Lewis Hamilton joining Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher and Seb Vettel as a four-time Formula 1 World Champion last Sunday at the Mexico City Grand Prix. And if thatwas not enough, Sunday night saw an epic Major League Baseball Game Five of the World Series, replete with statistical anomalies and closely contested to the very end, between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros, who go on to Game Six tonight. Then, on Monday Might Football last night, there was the equally tightly contested game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, both teams showing they had the fight in them.

I want to discuss Lewis Hamilton, since his entrance into the four-time World Champion club last Sunday smashes Millennial Woes and company's bravo sierra about IQ, which is basically a 2017 reformulation (and cribbing) of Al Campanis' 1980's bravo sierra about IQ. Before I do that, let me explain how Lewis entered the four-time club.

In Formula 1, for a driver to score points in any given Grand Prix, that driver has to end up in the top ten finishing positions. Each team has two drivers, each driving a team car, during any given Grand Prix, so, for a team to score points in the Constuctors' Championship, at least one driver from that team has to finish tenth or better. The most points are awarded to the team and driver who finish first, the second most points to the driver who ends up second, and the third most points to the driver who ends up third. The three drivers who end up first, second and third go up to the podium, and are thus described as having "a podium finish." Drivers who finish fourth through tenth do not go to the podium, but both they and their team get points. If a team gets both drivers in the top ten, that is better than just having one driver in the top ten. Each Grand Prix is a distinct entity from its predecessors and its successors in terms of outcome, in which respect it is also a discrete entity from the Friday and Saturday's free practice and qualifying sessions, as last Sunday's Mexico Grand Prix spectacularly showed from even before the first lap was completed through to the end of the race. However, each Grand Prix is continuous with each other Grand Prix in that the points a driver and team accrue are cumulative throughout the entirety of the season.

That is why, although Lewis Hamilton finished only ninth (after the spectacular, tyre and front-end-shredding contact between him, his then-championship rival Seb and Red Bull's Max Verstappen before even the first lap was completed on Sunday put Lewis at a distinct disadvantage for the rest of the race), he still became the 2017 Formula 1 Driver's Champion on Sunday. When the race started on Sunday, Lewis had thus far scored enough points that his only rival, Seb, hadto finish second or third in order to keep the 2017 Drivers' Championship a going concern going to Brazil in two weeks time. On Sunday, Seb recovered spectacularly well from that first lap crash--much more so than Lewis, who was lapped by the last place car at one point.. He ended up in fourth place from the back of the pack after his entire front end had to be replaced. But, fourth place simply did not give Seb enough points to surpass Lewis this year in the Drivers' Championship.

There are some who say this method of scoring points and winning championships is unfair, unsporting and inglorious. These are the same kind of people who are Dodgers fans whinging that the runs they scored in the penultimate game were only due to the Astros mistakes. I have a rather different take on this.

Yes, Lewis became champion on Sunday, not because of his performance on Sunday, which was distinctly sub-par. And yes, there have been Dodgers (and other sports teams) successes that were the result, not of the team's proficiency, but rather the result of the opposition's mistakes. I would argue that these kinds of victories are as valid as victories won by pure sportsmanship and excellence of execution alone because these kinds of victories reflect real-world conditions, i.e. sub-ideal conditions. Sports have rules and, today, probably enough metrics to rival physics (not surprising since many sports are field demonstrations of aerodynamics and probability.) To be sure, one can argue that a sportsman who wins by pure sportsmanship alone rather than by default (the opposition's mistakes, the way the scoring system is cumulative from game/race to game/race) is the more gifted athlete. This stands to reason. However, it ignores the fact that performance in and outcome of each game and race are discrete entities. Just because a sportsman does very well in a series of games/races, this will not determine the same sportsman's performance and outcome in the next, or other future, games/races. Sportstmen are human. Even if they do not get injured, fatigue takes its toll. That is why, except for this year, Formula 1 Grand Prixs were held every otherweek. That is why no pitcher in Major League Baseball pitches for the entire game. That is why Lebron James does not play the entire game. Sportsmen, just like aircraft parts, have a Mean Time Between Failure Rate.

If one applies the strictest interpretation of the rulebook of sportsmanship to the air wars in Europe and the Pacific, then it is unfair that the USAAF defeated the Luftwaffe and the Imperial Japanese Navy air arm because the Luftwaffe had the more experienced pilots and the IJN air arm had the better fighter bird. The air wars in the Pacific and Europe, however, were fought in the real world, wherein an enemy loss by default is as valid as one's own victory gained entirely on one's own personal prowess.

That being said, professional sportsmen have a higher level of skill and many more hours deovted each week to training than does the average person. It is a LOTharder to obtain a Formula 1 Super Licensethan it is to obtain an ordinary passenger vehicle operator's license. Formula 1 often exceeds 200mph on a track with geometrically more curves than the average highway has. That Lewis Hamilton became the 2017 Formula 1 Diver's Champion by default last Sunday does not in any way detract from the fact that he is at least several orders of magnitude a better-trained, practiced and experienced driver than the schlub you end up behind on the road, the same schlub who thinks that the indicator switch/turn signal is purely ornamental and who also cannot see the problem with concurrently texting and driving.

University physicists like Thunderf00t and Professor Philip Moriarty have doctorates in chemistry and physics respectively. This means that, as undergraduates, they took the two-to-three semester Calculus and Analytic Geometry course concurrently with the Introduction to Physics Course, as well as the Differential Equations Course. I, on the other hand, have only a high school-level numeracy. I took a Calculus course taught by a university instructor on a university campus. But this was NOTCalculus and Analytic Geometry, which is routinely restricted to engineering, mathematics, physics and chemistry majors. Rather, this was the one-semester "Calculus" course whose sole prerequisite was acceptance to the university by the admissions committee. Thunderf00t and Professor Moriarty are both capable of doing in their heads calculations that are inconceivable to me.

Thunderf00t and Professor Moriarty also have weeks to do these calculations, if they are the ones doing these calculations at all. Lewis Hamilton, Yasiel Puig and Brett Hundley each has seconds to calculate the trajectory most likely to be successful, and they all have to make this calculation in their heads, with not even a dull pencil and a scrap of paper. Thunderf00t and Professor Moriarty, in addition to having weeks to do complex calculations, usually defer these calculations to a) their army of undergraduate and graduate slaves/Teaching Assistants, and/or b) the campus' supercomputer.

The bottom line is as follows. Thunderf00t and Professor Moriarty most likely are conceptually aware of many more combinations and permutations of calculations than are Lewis Hamilton, Yasiel Puig and Brett Hundley. But Lewis Hamilton, Yasiel Puig and Brett Hundley can each individually make field expedient, real-world calculations at a geometric fraction of the time that it would take Thunderf00t and Professor Moriarty to do these calculations were the latter two deprived of their armies of undergraduate and graduate slaves, campus supercomputers and even a scrap of paper and a pencil.